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It Takes a Quiz Show Host: #Occupygezi and Culture Jamming aganist CensorshipTurkey

I’ve written about the abject failure of Turkish media to adequately cover the news of the most important protests in the country since the 1980 coup. Many media outlets aired irrelevant documentaries and talk shows (talk show about legal definitions of theft, cooking shows, dolphin training, etc) while clashes spread to dozens of provinces and many neighborhoods in many major cities.

In fact, CNN Turkey’s (owned by Time Warner and Turkish Dogan media group) airing of “penguin” documentaries during intense clashes (while CNN International reported news from Turkey!) became a protest meme.

A prominent actor used his interview on CNN to wear a penguin shirt and desperate Turks tried to lure CNN Turkey back to news by photoshopping penguins into protest pictures:

Perhaps one of the most striking attempts to pierce and criticize the veil of censorship on Turkish media came from a quiz show host, Ali İhsan Varol, whose “Guess the Word” program airs on weeknights. As citizens of Turkey watched with their jaws on the floor (and many standing up and clapping in front of their TV sets according to my social media feeds), he asked his guests to guess words such as “resistance,” “censorship,” twitter”, “tear gas”, and more. He finished his 70 queries with questions whose answers were “resign” and “apologize.”

The next day, he was not allowed to air live and his fate remains uncertain.

Here’s a short clip of the game. After the clip, the full list of questions and answers.

Here’s a (rough) translation of the questions and answers Ali Ihsan Varol asked his guests on live TV on June 3rd (Turkish here, feedback welcome, very quick translation):

1- A journey undertaken to see, to have fun: GEZI –name of the park that is at the center of the protests.

2- A large garden with trees and flowers in the center of a place of residence that allows people to breathe: PARK

3- In international law, someone who is not a member of armed forces or other armed groups in a country: CIVILIAN

4- An activity geared towards trying to change or improve a situation: A PROTEST [EYLEM]

5- A coming together around a set of ideas without being divided: UNITY

6- The metaphor for understanding what the facts are: TO WAKE UP

7- The people Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said should be “the most important representatives of human dignity and qualities, defense of nation and freedom of speeech”:YOUTH

8- The ability to make decisions according to correct, meaningful interpretation: COMMON SENSE

9- Property that should never be vandalized or damaged, that belong to all the people: PUBLIC PROPERTY

10-Ideology that depends on non-violence to carry out protests: PACIFISM

11-To damage public property on purpose: VANDALISM

12-Democratic solution box: THE BALLOT BOX

13-A voting method to ask the people what they think about political and social problems: REFERENDUM

14-The person that turns the right into not right and the protester into terrorist: PROVOCATEUR

15-People who live in the same country, share a culture: PEOPLE

16-A long-lived plant that is the symbol of being free: TREE

17-An area covered by treas considered symbol of fraternal unity: FOREST

18-The kids from Beşiktaş with the soul of Don Quixote (or chevalier): ÇARŞI

Being Turkish, I sometimes watch this show with my parents when I visit them, and I have always liked the host because he is so friendly and humble with his competitors. I now have a new found respect for this man as it was his decision to run these questions, knowing what the consequences of his actions might be.

Zeynep Tufekci
Exploring the interactions between technology and society...
I'm an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology. I'm a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. For 2014-2015, I am an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
I am currently a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Previously, I was a fellow at Princeton University Center for Information Technology and an an assistant professor of sociology at UMBC. For more info, see the About page.